Friends of Princeton University Library Small Talk with David Nirenberg, Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study
Number and Humanity: John von Neumann versus Daniel Defoe on the nature of desire
Join the Friends of PUL for their monthly Small Talk, which will feature David Nirenberg, Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study on December 14.
Our knowledge of mathematics has structured much of what we think we know about ourselves as individuals and communities, shaping our psychologies, sociologies, and economies. In pursuit of a more predictable and more controllable cosmos, we have extended mathematical insights and methods to more and more aspects of the world. Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity. Yet, in the process, are we losing sight of the human? When we apply mathematics so broadly, what do we gain and what do we lose?
We welcome current Friends of PUL members to attend in person. A reception will follow the live talk.
The presentation will also be available by Zoom.
*PLEASE NOTE: Online registration is now closed for this event. Please email libraryf@princeton.edu if you would like to attend.*
Photo credit: Andrea Kane
- Date:
- Wednesday, December 14, 2022
- Time:
- 4:00pm - 6:00pm
- Location:
- Center for Modern Aging (formerly PSRC), 101 Poor Farm Road, Princeton, NJ 08540
- Audience:
- Friends of Princeton University Library
- Categories:
- Friends of the Princeton University Library Event
David Nirenberg is the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. A historian and author, Nirenberg is recognized for wide-ranging scholarship in the history of ideas, and on the interaction of Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Nirenberg founded the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago and, as Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences there, led efforts to create the Computational Social Science program, the Center for International Social Science Research, and the Committee on Quantitative Social Science. He has also served on the Board of Governors of the Argonne National Labs and on the Board of Trustees of the National Opinion Research Center.
Nirenberg’s books include Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (1996), Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013), and Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, Medieval and Modern (2014). His most recent book, co-authored with Ricardo Nirenberg, is Uncountable: a Philosophical History of Number and Humanity from Antiquity to the Present.
Nirenberg was born to immigrant parents from Argentina who eventually settled in Albany, NY. He graduated with an A.B. (1986) from Yale University and earned his M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1992) from Princeton University’s Department of History.
Nirenberg has received various prizes and honors, including the Historikerpreis from the city of Münster and the Laing Prize from University of Chicago Press in 2017, an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa (2016), the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize from Phi Beta Kappa (2014), the John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America (2000), and the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize (1999) and Premio del Rey Prize (1997) from the American Historical Association. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Medieval Academy of America.
This event is part of the Friends of the Princeton University Library Small Talks Series.
View recordings of previous events.
Join the Friends of the Princeton University Library. Friends receive a newsletter, two issues of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, and are invited to participate in a variety of activities and events, including exhibition openings, lectures and talks, gala dinners, workshops on topics such as preservation, bookbinding, and print collecting.
To request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact pulcomm@princeton.edu at least 3 working days in advance.